Our View: State's attorney: Brady

Saturday

Oct 27, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 27, 2012 at 7:32 PM

State's attorney: Brady The race for Peoria County state's attorney pits an elder statesmen of the legal community who currently holds the office against an aggressive challenger who spent a dozen years as a prosecutor before entering private practice. Both are competent lawyers.

The race for Peoria County state's attorney pits an elder statesmen of the legal community who currently holds the office against an aggressive challenger who spent a dozen years as a prosecutor before entering private practice. Both are competent lawyers.

Jerry Brady, 63, of Edwards, has been state's attorney since August 2011, recommended by his predecessor, Kevin Lyons - who became a judge - and appointed unanimously by the County Board. He did a three-year stint in the office out of law school, working for then-State's Attorney John Barra, then became a well-known local defense attorney whose practice covered the gamut.

Frank Ierulli, 46, of Peoria, worked in Lyons' office from 1992 to 2004, serving as a felony prosecutor - from which he successfully tried 10 murder cases - and also running the juvenile and civil divisions. He left to take a position in a local firm where he's now a partner, doing litigation and local government work. He was the other finalist for the job Brady got.

Ierulli is not a big fan of the "Don't Shoot" anti-crime initiative that Brady has championed, arguing that it is too narrowly focused on gun crimes, that it "accepts illegal activity" - specifically drug trafficking that is just as prevalent "in Dunlap as on the East Bluff" - that the timing of its rollout has been politically motivated. He says his approach to crime fighting would be more "traditional."

Brady would disagree with all of those characterizations. He insists that he's "not a hug-a-thug," that if anything his office is partnering with the federal government to get stiffer penalties for irredeemably violent gang-bangers, that traditional task forces characterized by police saturating an area work in the short term but not over the long haul - while alienating innocent residents and killing needed cooperation with law enforcement - and in any case are no longer pragmatic given government budget realities.

Both candidates cite community dialogue and assistance as critical. Brady meets with police departments, social service agencies, neighborhood leaders, etc., as much as or more than any state's attorney in memory, and Ierelli promises to do the same. Ierulli provides numbers showing significantly fewer cases being charged but says court backlogs remain severe; he'd establish a policy of clearing cases more quickly, of resisting continuance requests, of consolidating cases against defendants accused of multiple violations in one courtroom before one judge, of fighting probation for those freed to the streets to commit the same crimes again. The wheels of justice can turn slowly, that's a legitimate issue that concerns Brady as well, and he's been trying to crack down on probation violations. It's also true that none of the above is within the unilateral, decision-making jurisdiction of the state's attorney. The local judiciary also has something to say about such matters.

As far as managing the office - with close to 50 attorneys and other staff - Ierulli says he'd make changes "in process, not people." Brady says the office functions well as is.

Beyond the core issues described above, this campaign has taken some weird detours that require comment. First, an issue has been made of the fact that Ierulli was a lifelong Democrat before becoming a Republican for this race. From this vantage, party affiliation is irrelevant to this office; one is confident that neither candidate will prosecute crime through a partisan lens.

Meanwhile, it borders on unbelievable that abortion has been injected into this race, with Ierulli playing up his personal, pro-life position - the same as Brady's - in campaign literature. Brady is quite correct to say that this issue has no place in this office or in this election, unless of course a state's attorney plans to prosecute abortion as a crime, which the U.S. Supreme Court has said it is not. Elected prosecutors swear an oath to abide by the law; Roe v. Wade is the law. Give it a rest.

Finally, Ierulli says "the two most important qualities of a state's attorney are good judgment and to be fair and balanced," but arguably none of that is on display with his latest TV ad, which proclaims that "Jerry Brady is failing even with a 10 percent bigger budget" while ascribing 10 local murders to the deficiencies of his stewardship. That's a bit of election-year nonsense regarding an office that, as Ierulli himself acknowledges, is inherently "reactive" in its role as a post-arrest seeker of justice. This community should no more blame Brady for those homicides than it should Ierulli if he prevails. By the way, the County Board-approved budget is up slightly - nowhere close to 10 percent - but actual office spending is down from 2011 to 2012; it's public record.

All that said, we have two qualified candidates here.

Much of what Ierulli proposes, Brady is doing. In his short time in office he's built relationships in the community - especially with the feds - and done so without playing favorites, as evidenced by his prosecution of two Peoria police officers accused of trying to cover up an accident. "Don't Shoot" may be no savior but this page is willing to let the considerable effort that has already gone into it play out. Arguably that could be interrupted without Brady's leadership. He's built a reputation over many decades for honesty and integrity.